East Cork and Irish History, Ancestry and Heritage

Month: June 2015

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John Hovenden was the eldest son of Giles Hovenden who was granted the lease of the lands of Corabbey in June 1551. A quiet man, barely mentioned in the state papers, John may have succeeded his father as the leaseholder of Corabbey until 1572. The name is spelled Hoveden in this image – it was the original name in medieval times with the first ‘n’ sneaking in by Tudor times.

‘Lease to Gyles Hovynden ; of the site of the abbey of Chore alias Core, the lands of Chore and Kyl-(blank)-agh and Ballygybbyn, and the rectories of Chore, Downebowlogg, Kylrovayn, Kyl(collehy), St Katherine by Cork and Mogellygg. To hold for 21 years. Rent £26 5s.’ Fiant 6806 Elizabeth I (or 1147a Edward VI).

from TheIrish Fiants of the Tudor Sovereigns, (vol III) 1994

One of the difficulties facing Irish historians is the lack, or apparent lack, of documentation. We’ve already noted that when the Cistercian abbey of Mainistir na Corann/Corabbey was dissolved in 1543, the monastic buildings and the old monastic estate was granted to the former abbot, Philip FitzDavid Barry, on a twenty-one year lease with a rent payable to the crown. If anything, this was a kindness since the abbey had been Philip’s home since the early sixteenth century. But that lease would have run to 1565 – about seven years into the reign of Elizabeth I. What happened to the land between the end of the lease in 1565 and 1573 when the property was granted to John FitzEdmund FitzGerald of Cloyne and Cahermone on a new lease? Who held the land until FitzGerald took over? Nobody has bothered to explain this gap. But now the mystery is solved – thanks to a document that was incorrectly filed by an Elizabethan civil servant about 1572!

The horrific destruction of the Four Courts, Dublin, in June 1922 destroyed a vast amount of historic Irish public records, including the original fiants. (Cashman Collection/RTE)

The above text is from a fiant recording the grant of the site and former monastic estate of Corabby/Mainistir na Corann together with the tithes of certain rectories to Giles Hovenden during the short reign of King Edward VI. A fiant was a warrant issued by the government to the Court of Chancery in Ireland. This court was the authority that issued letters patent under the Great Seal of Ireland. Basically a fiant takes its title from the Latin phrase at the start of the order: Fiant litteraepatente – ‘let letters patent be made….’ The letter patent (or published letter) was the key legal document that certified a government grant or order. It was registered in the rolls of the Court of Chancery, thus guaranteeing the patent extra legal effect. The Four Courts Fire of 1922 destroyed all the fiants issued throughout Irish history, but we are fortunate that they had been calendared and published in the 1880s and republished in the 1990s. So these important records survive in a somewhat abbreviated fashion. Since the exact date and year of the issue of this particular fiant is lost from the copy of the record, we must look to the term of office of Sir James Croft, the Lord Deputy of Ireland who signed it. Croft was Lord Deputy from 21 April 1551 to April 1552, and because the fiant was issued in the month of June, we can firmly date the fiant and the grant of the leasehold of Corabbey to June 1551.

What is interesting is that this grant of the leasehold to Giles Hovenden is simply unknown in Midleton. The reason is that this fiant was misfiled during the reign of Elizabeth I – some things NEVER change in the Irish civil service! The grant itself is quite a surprise because the previous leaseholder was Philip FitzDavid Barry the ‘former’ abbot of Corabby, who was a local man, almost certainly born in Castleredmond Castle. Abbot Philip had been granted a twenty-one year lease in 1544, so it should have run until 1565. However, since he was almost certainly the abbot Philip of Chore who was granted the vicarage of Inchinabecky and the rectory of Shandon in 1504, it is likely that he was already elderly and died some time between 1546 and 1551. It is very likely that, following Philip Barry’s death, the lease of Corabbey came back into the hands of the Crown due to the accumulated arrears of rents. So the land was let out again for another twenty-one year period to Giles Hovenden.

Hugh O’Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone, was made a ward of Giles Hovenden by the Crown when his father was murdered.

So who exactly was Giles Hovenden? He was an Englishman who came to Ireland during the reign of Henry VIII to serve in the king’s army. It seems that he came from Ulcomb near Maidstone in Kent. It should be noted that the Hovendens appear to have been neighbours of the St Leger family – Sir Anthony St Leger of Ulcomb and Leeds Castle was the Lord Deputy of Ireland for an astonishing three separate terms – 1540-1548, 1550-1551 and 1553-1556. A captain of light horse in 1532, Giles Hovenden was given some interesting commissions to execute. He was one of the Commissioners for the government of Connaught in 1544, In conjunction with James FitzJohn FitzGerald, 14th Earl of Desmond, on 28 July 1551, Hovenden was made a commissioner for the government of the counties of Cork, Limerick and Kerry. In December 1551, the earl asked Hovenden to arrest his own son and heir, Gerald FitzJames FitzGerald (later the 15th Earl), and his own brother Maurice FitzJohn FitzGerald, because they had raided McCarthy lands in Cork! Clearly Hovenden was able to get on very well with the ‘Old English’ and the Gaelic Irish. He seems to have had business dealings with Conn O’Neill, 1st Earl of Tyrone, concerning the Earl’s lands in Ballygriffin in County Dublin. It seems likely that Giles Hovenden retired from government service in 1556 when St Leger left office for the last time.

On 29 November 1549 Giles Hovenden was granted the lands of Killeban in Leix, later Queen’s County, now County Laois. He married Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir Walter Cheevers and had five sons and a daughter John, Peter, (or Piers), Richard, Walter, Henry and Joanna.

The eldest son, John Hovenden of Killeban, was granted the arms shown at the head of this post in 1585. There is very little in the official records about John Hovenden – one commentator suggests that he kept his head down and attempted to lead a quiet life, quite an achievement in a turbulent age. It is perfectly possible that this man inherited his father’s leasehold of Corabbey, for the second son, Peter, had property and income from King’s County (Offaly), Queen’s County (Laois), Kildare, Meath, Down, Tipperary, Louth and Roscommon. The fourth son, Walter, after military service in the Netherlands, was killed when the O’Mores attacked the fort and town of Maryborough (now Portlaoise) in 1579.

The third and fifth sons, Richard and Henry,became the foster-brothers of Hugh O’Neill, who later became the 2nd Earl of Tyrone! They actually ‘went native’ as both served O’Neill as military officers during his revolt against Queen Elizabeth I during the Nine Years War. Henry actually became O’Neill’s secretary and confidential advisor and, perhaps, his chief of intelligence. henry followed O’Neill into exile during the Flight of the Earls in 1607.

The Tudor boy king. Edward VI became king in 1547 at the age of nine and died aged fifteen in 1553. He was the king when Giles Hovenden was granted the twenty-one year lease of Corabbey. (c) National Portrait Gallery, London; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

How did Hugh O’Neill end up as a foster-brother to Giles Hovenden’s sons? The Earldom of Tyrone had been awarded to Conn O’Neill by Henry VIII when Conn submitted to the Crown as part of the Surrender and Regrant policy. Conn planned to pass on the earldom to his illegitimate son, Matthew, Baron of Dungannon Matthew was the father of Brian and Hugh O’Neill. However, in typical Irish fashion, Conn’s legitimate son, Shane, objected and in 1558, Shane’s men killed Matthew. A year later Conn, Earl of Tyrone, died and he should have been succeeded by his grandson Brian, the new Baron of Dungannon, and the government’s preferred choice. But Shane O’Neill was too strong and he claimed the title Earl of Tyrone for himself. Brian was assassinated in 1562 by a cousin, probably on Shane O’Neill’s orders. This left Brian’s younger brother, Hugh, a minor, as the new Baron of Dungannon and the government’s preferred candidate as Earl of Tyrone. However the young Hugh O’Neill was very vulnerable to assassination. The government placed him in the care of Giles Hovenden as a Ward of the Crown. Hugh grew up with Richard and Henry Hovenden. There is some speculation that Hugh may have been fostered in the Gaelic Irish fashion to Giles Hovenden when he was still a boy. This might explain why English officials considered the Hovenden brothers to be O’Neill’s foster-brothers. This close relationship was the basis of the friendship that led to Richard and Henry ‘going native’ during the 1590s when Hugh O’Neill finally gained control of his earldom of Tyrone.

Bective Abbey in County Meath was converted into a house after it was suppressed by Henry VIII. Did Giles Hovenden do the same to Corabbey/Mainistir na Corann?

So there you have it – a missing link in the history of Midleton, or, more correctly, Corabbey/Mainistir na Corann. The leasehold of the old Cistercian monastery and its estate was granted to Giles Hovenden, formerly of Kent, in June 1551. He was Midleton’s ‘missing Tudor-era landlord’.The irony is that Hovenden’s ward or foster-son, Hugh O’Neill, helped to suppress the Second Desmond Rebellion (1579-1583). This led to the final defeat and death of the same Gerald FitzJames FitzGerald, 15th Earl of Desmond, who had been arrested with his uncle Maurice by Giles Hovenden in December 1551! Later Hugh O’Neill would conduct a devastating raid on Barrymore and Imokilly, including the former Hovenden leasehold of Corabbey, during his sweep into Munster in 1600 during the Nine Years’ War (1594-1603).

Only loyal subjects of the Crown need apply in… Tudor Ireland!

Why do I say that the fiant of June 1551 was misfiled? If the Hovenden lease of Corabbey did indeed run to 1572, then it was necessary for the government to examine the details of that lease when it lapsed that year to ensure that the land was indeed available to let without encumbrances to a new tenant. An inspection of the fiant showed that a new lease on the former monastic estate could indeed be granted to someone else. In 1573 the old monastery and the former monastic estate were granted on a twenty-one year lease to John FitzEdmund FitzGerald, who had bought neighbouring Cahermone Castle and its estate from impoverished relatives in 1571. FitzGerald now had a nice little estate that ran all the way to the Owencurra River. And the government clerk omitted to replace the original fiant of 1551 with the documents relating to the reign of King Edward VI! No wonder the historians have missed it, despite the fact that it was hiding in plain sight for over a century! Now I wonder if any papers have survived about the Hovendens in Corabbey…..

Whaddya mean you’re lost? You can’t get lost in Ireland! It’s an island isn’t it? And no, this isn’t an Irish signpost. Well maybe not…….

Several months ago I published a post on townlands – Ireland’s original and ancient answer to postcodes. This is an interesting item on using townlands as part of your genealogical research.I would suggest that readers take particular note of the similarity of townland names and their repetition in the same county. The golden rule is caveat emptor – don’t buy the first bit of information you get…..check it out, and then double check!

The barn at Oxenford Farm, Surrey, was designed by Pugin in 1843 for George Brodrick, 5th Viscount Midleton. (Photo – SovalValtos, 2014)

‘…I have already produced almost as many drawings for this potato house as I have for any of my churches!‘

AWN Pugin in a letter to Viscount Midleton, (1845-48?).

When an architect as celebrated as Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin tells you that he has put so much effort into designing a potato house in a farm complex, you’d think that the self same potato house, or farm complex, would appear on the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage, which officially lists all of our protected historic buildings. But Pugin’s Dungourney farm isn’t there. So we are left with a mystery. The only clue I have is that the farm was then ‘…now building….‘ near Dungourney, just a few miles north east of Midleton.

The Oxenford Farm gate lodge was designed by Pugin in 1843 and, after recent restoration by the Landmark Trust, it can be hired as a weekend retreat. (Photo – Ainslie, 2013)

You might think that Pugin (1812-1852) was too busy designing churches and houses of Parliaments for him to give any attention to a farm complex, but he already had form, having designed an ornamental farm on the Peper Harow estate in Surrey for the 5th Viscount Midleton between 1843 and 1845. This was Oxenford Grange Farm which was once a grange of Waverley Abbey – so appropriately Pugin created a gothic revival farmyard, including gatehouse, barn and other farm buildings. The (British) Landmark Trust have renovated the gatehouse and rent it out for short stays. The Landmark Trust have also superbly restored Pugin’s home at The Grange in Ramsgate, Kent, for the same purpose.

The former Midleton Arms Hotel was designed as two town houses by Pugin, with shops on the ground floor. The building is probably a few years older than its assumed completion date of 1851.

Midleton already has a building attributed to Pugin – two townhouses with shops on the ground floor built in a lovely understated late gothic or early Tudor style. The completion date for these is said to be 1851 – the year before Pugin’s death. But the houses may have been completed by the architect’s son, Edward Welby Pugin. However, I suspect that the pair of houses may actually be older – they were mentioned in 1845 as part of the improvements of the town by the landlord, George, 5th Viscount Midleton. It is likely that these houses were knocked into one structure as a hotel by the early 1850s. They certainly served as the Midleton Arms Hotel until the beginning of the 1980s. Sadly, to date, the structure hasn’t been researched properly.

The largest work by Pugin was his decoration for the interior of the Palace of Westminster. Although the architect is usually stated to be Charles Barry, I suspect Pugin’s role was far greater than Barry ever admitted.

Augustus Pugin was famous for being a strong champion of the gothic revival style of architecture, setting new standards in design. His most famous work was the interiors of the Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament) in London. Sadly the building was damaged by Luftwaffe bombing during the Second World War and some of his work was obliterated. The building is usually credited to Charles Barry but Barry was a classicist and he had to enlist Pugin to give the building a romantic gothic dress. The dramatic skyline is really by Pugin as is the clock tower commonly called ‘Big Ben,’ but now officially the Queen Elizabeth II Tower.

Clearly not a pototo house! The reason Pugin went mad in February 1852 was a nervous breakdown caused by overwork on such items as the Throne in the House of Lords in Westminster.

The other Midleton connection to Pugin is that his daughter Mary married a local lad from East Cork – George Coppinger Ashlin, who was born in Little Island. George’s older brother, John Coppinger Ashlin, lived in Castleredmond House, just yards from my present home. The road leading from Rocky Road to the Ballinacorra road was called Ashlin Road – but the by-pass built in the 1980s obliterated part of the route and the road had to be re-routed. Happily it kept the name Ashlin Road. George Coppinger Ashlin was himself a prolific architect, especially of Catholic churches, but his style was more varied than Pugin’s. Ashlin designed the Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Midleton as well as the Munster and Leinster Bank on Main Street – now the Allied Irish Bank.

The red-brick Munster and Leinster Bank (on the right, now the Allied Irish Bank, was designed by Pugin’s son-in-law GC Ashlin in 1899. It still dominates the northern end of Midleton’s Main Street. This photo was taken a decade or two after the bank opened in 1901.

My family connection with Pugin’s architecture goes back to my grandfather, Richard Harpur, who came from Barntown in County Wexford. The local Catholic church there was designed by Pugin an is still one of his best preserved buildings – St Alphonsus, Barntown.

However, I’d really love to see the potato house that Pugin designed (during the Famine!) for Lord Midleton at Dungourney! Hopefully it hasn’t been demolished! Pugin’s Dungourney farm complex needs to be listed for protection, so does anybody know where it is? Given what Pugin said to Lord Midleton about his designs, I really want to see that potato house!

King Charles II granted the Charter of Midleton to Sir St John Brodrick in 1670. He also gave his name to the former Charles Street in Midleton, now Connolly Street.

‘…constitute, ordain and appoint the said Castle, Town & Lands of CastleRedmond & Corabby aforesaid, with the appurtenances in the County of Corke aforesaid, shall from henceforth forever be a free Borrough & Corporation & shall be called by the name of Borrough & Town of Middleton.….’,

These are the words that give the town of Midleton in County Cork its modern name. As you can observe, spelling was rather flexible in those days. The above statement is buried within the charter issued by King Charles II to Sir St John Brodrick in June 1670. We have already noted in a previous post that the date of the charter ( ‘…the Tenth day of June in the Two and twentyeth year of our Reign & in the year ofOur Lord One Thousand Six hundred and Seventy…‘, 10 June 1670) was actually ten days behind the corrected calendar authorised by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, but the British, being suspicious of any ‘papist’ innovations, preferred to stick to the old Julian calendar until 1752. So the correct date for the issuing of the Charter of Midleton is 20 June 1670, which is why I’m discussing it now.

On Thursday 18 June I spent the morning at the Cork Archives examining the only copy of the charter to have survived. This is a manuscript copy made by Rev Mr Verney Lovett on Saturday, 7 February 1784 and copied ‘verbatim’ from the text then preserved in the Rolls Office in Dublin. Anyone familiar with Irish history will know that the Public Record Office in Dublin was destroyed at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1922, thus incinerating centuries of Irish historical records – including the text which Mr Lovett consulted. The fact that Lovett made a copy of the charter suggests that the original Charles II charter document given to St John Brodrick had already vanished. The Rev Mr Lovett, being a burgess of Midleton, was obliged to make a fair copy from the surviving record, which he had neatly bound in a soft leather cover with the inscription Charter of Middleton 1670 embossed on it. Clearly this was intended to be a working document for the charter only takes up thirty pages, with most of the folio being blank.

John, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton was the co-founder of New Jersey with George Carteret. He was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland when Sir St John Brodrick applied for a charter. Despite is relaxed attitude to Catholics, Berkeley got on very well with the staunchly Protestant Brodrick.

The charter was issued by the king on the suit of Sir St John Brodrick (or Broderick, as the text has it) on the advice and consent of ‘our Right & well beloved cousin John Lord Berkeley Lieutenant General & General Governor of our said Kingdom of Ireland‘. This was John, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton, who with Sir George Carteret founded the Province of New Jersey in North America in 1664-1674. Berkeley had fought for Charles I in the Civil War and was exiled during the Commonwealth. Appointed Lord President of Connaught for life in 1661, he appointed a deputy to do his work there shortly thereafter. Berkeley was sent back to Ireland as Lord Lieutenant in 1670 and stayed in office until 1672. He was considered very pro-Catholic (not surprising given his French and Spanish-Netherlands exile under Cromwell). This apparent pro-Catholic stance makes Berkeley’s friendship with Sir St John Brodrick all the more surprising, for Brodrick was a staunch low-church Protestant.

The sprawling Whitehall Palace was originally Cardinal Wolsey’s London residence, then the residence of Henry VIII. More of a town than a coherent palace, it burned down in the 1690s, to the relief of William of Orange who hated its damp atmosphere. It was from here that Charles II issued Letters Patent to Berkeley to draw up the Charter of Midleton.

The charter was issued from Whitehall Palace under letters bearing the king’s privy signet and sign manual (the king’s personal seal and signature) but was formally registered in the rolls of the High Court of Chancery of Ireland on 3 January 1671. This was a month overdue since the king had commanded that the charter be enrolled within six months of issuance – so it should have been enrolled in early December 1670. The legal profession’s Christmas break must have delayed matters.

Charter of King Charles Ii to the colony of Rhode Island, 1663. This is what an actual charter document looks like. Sadly the Midleton charter seems to have vanished by 1784 when Rev Verney Lovett made his copy from the Chancery Rolls copy.

So what exactly was a charter and what did the it do? A charter is a legal document that could be issued by an authorising authority (the king) under its seal granting certain legal rights and privileges to a person, or a group of persons, or to a place or estate. This particular charter did three things. Firstly, as we’ve already discovered, the charter named the town formerly known as Mainistir na Corann or Corabbey as Middleton. To be honest, I was intrigued to note that the spelling Middleton appeared to apply only to the town, with the spelling Midleton applying only to the manor or estate of Sir St John Brodrick – until the spelling of the town’s new name changed near the end of the document – Middleton or Midleton were used for the name of both the town and the manor interchangeably. Perhaps there was a change of clerk during the drafting of the charter? it should be noted that this new name for the town is the only part of the charter still in force.

However the charter actually opens with the erection of the estates of Sir St John Brodrick into a manor, or Mannor, as it is sometimes spelled. A manor was an estate with specific identity bearing clear legal rights and powers. These rights and powers would apply to specific denominations of land. In the case of Midleton these were spread over four baronies. grouped by barony the denominations were the townlands of Castle-Redmond, Corraby, Killeagh, Knocknagoure, Knockgriffin, Curtistowne, Cahirmoan, Storm.Cotter, Carrigbane, Coppingerstown, Butlerstowne, BallyBane, Ballyrarla, Ballysimon,Ballymartin, Ballyknock & Coolerath, Rathcannon, Donigmore,& Kippane, Monemerrig, Bridgefield,Carrignasheny & Lictur Dowre, & Coolcurrig, Dromfaranie in the barony of Imokilly. Clearly the Imokilly lands constituted the larger part of the manor.

Then came Garriduff, Knocknacottig, Ballyannan, East Ballyvodick, West Ballyvodick, Ballintubber, Ballinecurrig, Ballyhasna,& Glanawillin in the barony of Barrymore.The outlying denominations were Donivally Ballygreggin, TempleRoane & Killehenisk in the barony of Fermoy, with Gallinguile and Kilbrony in the barony of Orrery in North Cork. All of these denominations were in the county of Cork. All of these lands were to be constituted an ‘intire Manor‘ with all the rights and privileges attached to a manor. Clearly the intention was that the estate should remain complete and intact for evermore.

The most important right attached to a manor was the right to hold manorial courts. There were three such courts in the Manor of Midleton: a Court Leet and View of Frank Pledge, and a Court Baron, and a Court of Record. Sir St John Brodrick could exercise his rights to hold these manorial courts by appointing one or more seneschals and a recorder to preside over these courts. The Court of Record was given jurisdiction over actions ot the value of £200 in English currency! This was a surprisingly large sum at the time. A Bailiff Minister was to serve as the agent of the Court of Record. In addition to keeping his manor courts, Sir St John Brodrick was given the right to keep and maintain a prison and to appoint a keeper to serve the Court of Record.

St John Brodrick was also granted the right to create a demesne of 800 acres for his exclusive use and to enclose a ‘park venery’ (deer park) and rabbit warren of 800 acres ‘more or less’! Indeed he did create a deer park at Cahermone which ran right up to the edge of the town (hence the two townlands of Park North and Park South). This park existed right up until the estate was sold off under the Land Acts of the late 1800s and early 1900s, although by then it was much reduced in size. And just in case anyone didn’t understand how powerful Brodrick had become, the lord of the manor was to ‘…have, receive, perceive, seize, Enjoy & convert….’ all ‘…waifs, strays, ffelons, goods of fugitives, & Deodands, ffishings, weers, Royalties, freewarren & privileges…‘ for his own benefit, profit, use and enjoyment!

It was the Lord of the Manor who controlled the town’s market – he was obliged to appoint a ‘clerk of the Markett‘ to keep order in the market and to collect the dues owed to him by the stall-holders.

Seal of the Corporation of Midleton as illustrated by Samuel Lewis in the Topographical Dictionary of Ireland. The spelling of Midleton was amended in the 19th century to prevent the mails from going astray!

The final major decision under the charter was to constitute the town on the estate as a borough as noted at the head of this post. The borough would ‘…extend into the said county of Corke every way from the middle of the said town onehundred acres in the whole….‘ Within the town there was to be a ‘..body Pollitick & Corporate consisting of one Sovereign,Two Bailiffs & two Burgesses.‘ This posed a problem for Mr Verney Love, because a few lines later we find that the Corporation would consist of .’…a Sovereign, Two bailiffs & TWELVE Burgesses.’ Mr Lovett underlined the word ‘twelve’ in his text, and, indeed, this was the structure of the Corporation thereafter, the same Corporation that Mr Lovett served on. This group of men would thereafter be called ‘The Sovereign, Bailiffs and Burgesses of the Burrough and Town of Middleton.‘.

The charter names William Hutchings as ‘.. a free burgess & first & modern Sovereign.‘ He was to hold office until ‘…the Thursday next after the Feastof St Michael the Archangel...’ in 1672! Hutchings was obliged to be sworn into office ‘…before 29th September next beforethe Justices of Assizes of County Corke…’ taking the Oath of Supremacy, and other oaths as required by law, including the ‘Corporal Oath‘ of Midleton. September 29th is Michaelmas or the Feast of St Michael, an important date in the legal and academic calendar since it marked the start of the autumn law term. The sovereign was to be the sole coroner for Midleton and would serve as a Justice of the Peace for one year after the conclusion of his term of office. From 1730, the sovereign was usually the agent for the absentee Viscount Midleton, often holding office of sovereign for many years in succession.

John Downing and John Gemings were appointed free burgesses and bailiffs of Midleton, also holding office until the Thursday following Michaelmas 1672. The burgesses were named as: Adam Wener, Peter Bettesworth, Richard Downing, Richard Walkham, Edward Laundy, Thomas Guard, John Wally, Nicholas Seward, Robert Cole, Thomas Knight, William Kinnagh, & Richard Hargrove.

Cooper Penrose of Cork was a burgess of Midleton in 1784. He commissioned this portrait of himself from Jacques-Louis David in 1802. This is the only portrait of an Irish subject by David. Sadly this superb portrait was sold by the family to a museum in San Diego. A huge loss to our artistic patrimony.

Rev Verney Lovett usefully supplied the names of most of his colleagues on the Corporation in 1784: Martin Delany and ThomasWigmore were the bailiffs that year. The burgesses were: George Courteney, George Courteney of Ballycrenan, the Earl of Shannon,Broderick Chinnery, Aubrey (?) McCarthy, Cooper Penrose, William Garde of Broomfield, Rev Verney Lovett himself, and Rev Laurence Broderick. The Courteneys were cousins, the Earl of Shannon’s Irish seat was at Castlemartyr, just a few miles east of Midleton, Brodrick Chinnery was descended from the first and second headmasters of Midleton College and was related to the Brodricks, Cooper Penrose was a wealthy Cork merchant, Rev Laurence Broderick was a cousin of the fourth Viscount Midleton at the time. Sadly Mr Lovett didn’t give us the name of the sovereign, but it might have been Rev Mr Green, Rector of Tullylease in north Cork – but this is uncertain.

Built or rebuilt by George Brodrick, 4th Viscount Midleton, in 1789, the Market House is the most important building on Main Street. It replaced a market house dating from the 1680s and was the location for the Corporation’s meetings and elections, as well as being the Borough and manorial courthouse. It’s now the town library. Historically only the central arch of the arcade was open – the rest were shops.

Elections for the sovereign and bailiffs were to be held annually on the Thursday following the Feast of St James the Apostle, which fell on 25 July, with the officers taking office on the Thursday after Michaelmas. The sovereign, as noted above, rarely changed, but the bailiffs were changed almost every year. The sovereign, bailiffs and burgesses were to elect ‘two discreet burgesses‘ as members of Parliament to sit in the Irish House of Commons whenever a general election or a by-election was called. Furthermore, the sovereign, bailiffs and burgesses could admit any number of freemen to the town on payment of a 5 shilling fee to be used for the benefit of the Corporation. Sadly, there’s no surviving list of freemen.

The Corporation was also free to possess and use a common seal for authorising Corporation business, with a design and inscription of their choice. They were also permitted to ‘…build or cause to be built in some convenient place in the said townof Middleton a common hall or Tholsell to be called the Tholsell of Middleton….’ wherein they might conduct the business of the Corporation. And to think we called it a market house or town hall all along! The Corporation was also permitted to organize a guild of merchants for the regulation of trade in the town (except the market) – but there’s no evidence that they bothered with this provision.

Not mentioned in the Charter, the silver Midleton Mace was almost certainly made by Robert Goble, a Huguenot goldsmith of Cork, around 1700 to symbolise the Corporation’s authority. It shows the Royal Crown on top with the arms of the Brodricks on the head. The mace is now preserved in the Hunt Museum in Limerick.

What exactly did the Corporation do? Well, it seems that it did very little – but that’s because the minute books and court records haven’t survived. Thus we can’t really say if the Corporation really did anything to turn Midleton into the town it is today – I suspect that the Lord of the Manor had more say in those developments since he benefited from the rents. The two bailiffs were required to maintain order in the town, but that basically was it. The loss of the two parliamentary seats in the Act of Union stripped Midleton of its unique parliamentary franchise. From 1801 the town was now represented by the MPs for the county! The most damning indictment of the Corporation of Midleton came in the First Report of the Commissioners on Municipal Corporations in Ireland in 1835:

‘...the Corporation has been kept up, and the annual election of officers has been held, but for what purpose it is not easy to discover; the members having no duties to discharge, nor any privileges or emoluments, except the occasional presence of a local justice of the peace within the town, who seldom acts as such…..‘

The commissioners noted that even the manor courts had ceased to function, presumably because the courthouse built to the designs of Richard Pain in 1829 now hosted regular Petty Sessions of the County Court, which was much more independent of the landlord and Corporation.

The Corporation of Midleton, along with many others in Ireland, was abolished in 1840. The manor had effectively ceased to exist as such after 1850 when the whole Midleton estate was spit in an inheritance dispute. From then on, all that remained, apart from hunting and fishing rights, was the name given to the town 345 years ago – Midleton. And to think that the place could have been called Charleville! But St John Brodrick’s friend, Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill and Earl of Orrery, had already appropriated that name in 1661 for his new town at Rathgoggan in Orrery barony in north Cork. So Brodrick’s town was named prosaically for its position half-way between Cork and Youghal.

Damian Shiels has done it again – this interesting account of the Midleton Waterloo pensioners appeared on his blog in January. Sadly there’s no record of the Midleton men who died at Waterloo two hundred years ago, on 18th June 1815.

We are currently in the midst of the 100th anniversary of World War One, but recent years have also marked the 200th anniversary of the Napoleonic Wars, a conflict in which tens of thousands of Irishmen fought. As anyone who has been on the tour of Midleton Distillery will be aware, part of that site was in use as a military barracks around this time. Unsurprisingly many men from Midleton and the surrounding parish ended up in the army- it is likely that recruiting parties were a regular sight around the town during the wars with France. Those that joined up embarked on lives that took them from East Cork to far flung locations, like the West and East Indies, to battles in Portugal and Spain, and even to Waterloo. After their service some went through soldier’s homes, such as the (still famous) Royal Hospital in Chelsea or the Royal…

The ruins of Ballyannan Castle from the south. Usually attributed to the Hodnetts, but actually held by a Mr E Gould in 1642, Ballyannan is an early 17th century fortified house with some later modifications. This house became the seat of St John Brodrick from 1653. In appearance, it must originally have resembled a small French chateau, with plastered, presumably whitewashed,walls and pepperpot roofs on the three turrets.

‘He was in reality sent over by Cromwell as a spy to corrupt the Munster Army and send him intelligence; Lieutenant Colonel W. Pigot, and the Captains St John Brodrick and Robert Gookin being likewise employed for the same purpose.‘

Thomas Carte: A History of the Life of James Duke of Ormonde. 1735.

From at least 1653 to 1964 the ground landlords in Midleton were the Brodrick family. But one question needs to be addressed. How exactly did the Brodricks get their land in the area? The quotation above refers to, among others, St John Brodrick – the first of the Brodricks of Wandsworth to acquire an estate in Ireland. The story of St John Brodrick and his settlement in Ireland during the regime of Oliver Cromwell is not yet properly written, and, unfortunately, it contains some odd assertions. I can’t claim that this post will clear everything up, but I hope to kill off some of the nonsense that is still floating around even in some very respectable history books. Thomas Carte’s reference to Brodrick being a Cromwellian spy was written by a staunch supporter of the Stuarts in 1735 and, while it may have a grain of truth, it perhaps does not tell the whole story behind Brodrick’s coming to Ireland.

A woodcut describing the enmity between the Royalists (Cavaliers) and Parliamentarians (Roundheads) during the English Civil War – but it could equally well express the sentiments of the Catholics vs. Protestants and Scots Presbyterians vs. English Episcopalians.

The outbreak in 1642 of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (the Irish Catholic Uprising, the English Civil War and the Covenanters’ War in Scotland), was to set the scene for the arrival of the Brodricks in south-east Cork. St John Brodrick was born in 1627 as the younger son of Sir Thomas Brodrick of Wandsworth. St John’s older brother, Alan, fought for King Charles I during the English Civil War and later served as secretary to the Sealed Knot society. This latter was a secret Royalist organisation in England aiming to restore King Charles II when Cromwell was Lord Protector. There are some assertions that St John Brodrick came to Ireland in 1642 to acquire estates here. But as a fifteen year old boy it seems highly unlikely that he’d be allowed jump from the English frying-pan into the Irish fire. There’s certainly no evidence that Brodrick inherited land in Ireland in 1642 – so he must have come by his estates another way.

What seems to have happened is that after his father’s death in 1643, St John Brodrick was groomed to fight with Parliament as a way of hedging the family’s bets on the outcome of the Civil War. He certainly seems to have been in the service of the Parliamentary cause by 1649. In that year he was sent to Ireland as an assistant to Lord Broghill who had just joined the Parliamentary side. And this connection to Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, proved instrumental in Brodrick’s land acquisitions in Ireland.

The man the Irish love to hate: Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of Great Britain and Ireland. He still has a bad press in Ireland and his regime settled a lot of officers on confiscated Irish lands, including St John Brodrick.

To understand what happened it is necessary to examine the complex four-sided civil war in Ireland from 1642 to 1652. The Confederate Catholics made up the largest group, rebelling against the Crown in defence of their landholdings and their right to worship as they wished. Their best leader was the Ulsterman Owen Roe O’Neill, the victor of Benburb. Unfortunately the Confederates were divided into Gaelic Irish (often very hardline) and the Old English (more Royalist in sympathy). Benburb introduces the second group in Ireland – the Presbyterian Scots. Some were settlers, mostly in Ulster where they obtained land under the Ulster Plantation. Others came over in Munroe’s army ….. only to be slaughtered at Benburb in 1646. Then there was the Royalist force, based mostly in Dublin and commanded by James Butler, Marquis of Ormond as he then was, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. This is the man who is the subject of Thomas Carte’s book, being promoted to a dukedom in 1660. The fourth group in Ireland were the Protestants of Munster. Their military leaders were David Barry, 1st Earl of Barrymore, who died of wounds shortly after the victory of Liscarroll in 1642, Morrough O’Brien, Lord Inchiquin who led the Munster Protestant Army for most of the period, and Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, a younger son of Richard Boyle, the same 1st Earl of Cork who had obtained a license for a market at Corabbey in 1624. The Munster Protestant victory at Liscarroll secured Cork and the area around Cork Harbour, as well as Youghal, for the Protestant cause, and, ultimately, for the Parliamentary cause. Initially the Munster Protestant leaders’ loyalties were still somewhat vaguely aligned in favour of the king, although they treated James Butler, Marquis of Ormond, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, with great suspicion.

Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, Cromwellian commissioner for forfeited estates in the County of Cork.Created 1st Earl of Orrery in 1660, Broghill helped secure Cork for Cromwell and, in 1660, he secured Ireland for King Charles II . He founded Charleville in North Cork, where he built a huge mansion, which he abandoned by the mid-1670s, when he moved his seat to Castlemartyr a few miles from Midleton. A good friend of St John Brodrick, his neighbour in Midleton, Broghill was a younger son of Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork and an older brother of Robert Boyle, the scientist. His descendants resised at Castlemartyr until the early 20th century.

During the period up to 1648, a strong rivalry existed between Inchiquin and Broghill. It didn’t develop into an open dispute – they managed to get along sufficiently to keep their hold on Cork secure. But the Parliamentary victory in the English Civil War, and execution of King Charles I in 1649, threw everything into confusion. Inchiquin was certainly disgusted by the death of the King. Broghill’s reaction, however, was more problematic. He later claimed that he was upset by the execution of the king, however, it does seem that his sympathies were very close to the Parliamentary side. One story put about after the Restoration of King Charles II (1660) is that Broghill was on his way to the Continent to consult Charles II when he was accosted by Oliver Cromwell in London and given a choice that was difficult to refuse – join fully and openly with Parliament or else get to know the Tower of London very intimately. Broghill was in Somerset when he eventually decided to take up Cromwell’s offer of a commission in the Parliamentary army. He apparently had a small part to play in the bloody sack of Wexford in 1649 before being sent by sea to Cork to secure that harbour and city for Cromwell. On Broghill’s arrival in Cork, Lord Inchiquin packed his bags and sailed off to Spain – where he became a Catholic! This left Broghill in total command of Cork. Cromwell spent the winter of 1649/50 in Youghal, a town controlled by the Boyles, in acknowledgement of Broghill’s importance in securing the area, and, presumably to keep Broghill firmly within the Parliamentary camp.

Murrough of the Burnings. Murrough O’Brien, Lord Inchiquin was the leader of the Protestant forces in Munster during the 1640s until ousted by Broghill in 1649.

(Murrough O’Brien, Lord Inchiquin, was the infamous ‘Murrough of the burnings’ of Irish popular history and he came from County Clare – hence his title. His descendants later returned to Imokilly and settled at Rostellan where, as the Earls of Thomond, they built a new house on the site of Rostellan Castle and the medieval church. On discovering that the old church and graveyard had been violated, a local woman pronounced a curse that no son would ever inherit the Rostellan estate – and it worked! The property passed via daughters into the hands of other families. Inchiquin’s descendants also came into possession of Petworth House in East Sussex which contains a superb collection of paintings by Turner. The vitally important Petworth House papers have yielded astonishing detail on the history of County Clare, but they have not yet been explored for the history of Rostellan and Imokilly. Petworth is now owned by the National Trust.)

But what of St John Brodrick? We know nothing, as yet, of his military career in England, which probably didn’t start until about 1645/46. One source suggests that Brodrick was appointed Provost Marshal to Broghill’s force in Cork. A Provost Marshal was an officer in charge of enforcing military discipline. But they often had another role – the gathering of intelligence. Basically, if his role as Provost Marshal is true, then St John Brodrick was indeed a spy for Cromwell, but not a secret agent. It is highly possible that Brodrick may have been given orders to keep Broghill on the straight and narrow path of Parliamentary loyalty. As an intelligence officer, it is also possible that Brodrick was instrumental in securing the transfer of loyalty among the Protestant troops in Cork from the king to Parliament by way of a mutiny. What is clear is that Brodrick and Broghill became great and firm friends. They appear to have shared a common religious outlook, both being ‘low church’ men. It seems likely that Brodrick got to know Oliver Cromwell during the latter’s sojourn in Youghal.

With the defeat of all the opposing armies in Ireland, the Cromwellian regime set about securing the country……and paying off its debts. The Adventurers, the people who had loaned funds to Parliament, had to be repaid (with interest), and the soldiers in the Parliamentary army had to be paid. The decade of civil wars meant that there was a serious shortage of funds, so Parliament came up with a better idea – pay everyone in land. The lands of Irish Catholics and Royalists would be confiscated and distributed to the Adventurers and old soldiers as payment.The bonus was that if these lands could be settled by good English protestants then Ireland would be secured against future Catholic rebellions.

Part of the Down Survey map of Barrymore showing the parishes.The former monastic estate of Manisitir na Corann/Corabbey is shown as a yellow area marked ‘Unforfeited Land.’ Parts of Mogeesha parish, as well as Templenacarriga, Ballyspillane, Dungourney, and Clonmel parish on Great Island as well as areas were also given to St John Brodrick in the 1653 settlement. Mainistir na Corann was considered to be part of Barrymore since the dissolution because its last abbot was a Barry. During the 1700s, the parish was transferred back into Imokilly. This copy of the map is preserved in the Bibliotheque National in Paris. Source: downsurvey.tcd.ie.

One of the commissioners appointed to supervise the distribution of lands in County Cork was Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill. And he made sure that his good friend, St John Brodrick, got some choice parcels of land, often right next to his own estates. One of those parcels was Mainistir na Corann/Corabbey now called Midleton. This was the old estate of the Cistercians of Chore, which had remained Crown property since the dissolution in 1543 and had been leased to Roger Boyle’s father, Richard, 1st Earl of Cork, by the 1620s. Brodrick also got estates in Orrery barony in North Cork – also next to Broghill’s lands in the same barony. To ensure that his friend didn’t want for much, Broghill also ensured that Brodrick got lands in Mogeesha parish, Templenacarriga parish, Ballyspillane parish, Dungourney parish and non-monastic lands in Corabbey parish as well as parcels in Ballyoughtera Parish and Clonmel parish on Great Island – all confiscated from ‘Irish Papists,’ By 1653, St John Brodrick, a younger son, had obtained a considerable estate in Ireland.

St John Brodrick established a deerpark from Cahermone to Park South and Park North townlands and chose Ballyannan Castle as his seat. This fortified house had previously been held by a Mr Gould, an ‘irish Papist.’ Not a bad return for a ‘spy.’ There’s still a lot of research to be done on St John Brodrick and his background and career.

Seal of the Corporation of Midleton as illustrated by Samuel Lewis in the Topographical Dictionary of Ireland.

You might imagine that I’d have a post up today about the Charter of Incorporation issued by King Charles II to Sir St John Brodrick incorporating his estate at Corabbey/Mainistir na Corann as a manor and corporate borough under the new name of Midleton.

Except – the 10th of June is NOT actually the correct date of the anniversary!

The Bull Inter gravissimas issued by Pope Gregory XIII in February 1582 to reform the calendar.

You see, Charles II and his subjects were still using the Julian Calendar that was already ten days behind the seasons. Pope Gregory XIII odered that a new system of calculation for the length of the year should be adopted on 4th October 1582 should be immediately followed the next day by the date 15th October! Gregory had been persuaded by the calculations and arguments of Aloysius Lilli of Calabria that the best way to correct the misalignment of the date of Easter with the vernal equinox was to do a sudden and once off correction of the dates and to modify the system of using leap years.

Jan Wyck’s depiction of the Battle of the Boyne – fought on 1st July 1690 (Old Style) but celebrated on 12th July (New Style).

Until 1700 the Julian Calendar was ten days behind the new Gregorian Calendar. The charter of Midleton in 1670 dated using the old system. Thus 10th June is NOT the actual anniversary of the Charter – the correct date is 20th June. You can see this pattern in operation in Northern Ireland every year on 12th July, which celebrates King William of Orange’s victory at the Battle of the Boyne over James II (Charles younger brother) on 1st June 1690 (Old Style). However, Pope Gregory’s initial decree, or Bull, was only accepted at once by Italy, Spain, Portugal (and their colonies) and Poland-Lithuania. But a year or two later the new calendar had spread to other Catholic countries. Protestant and Orthodox lands rejected the reform – even if their astronomers knew that Pope Gregory was right to change the calendar.

So it wasn’t until 1752 that the authorities in Britain and Ireland got over their anti-Catholicism and came into the modern world by adopting the Gregorian Calendar. By then the two calendars were eleven days apart! It must have been so frustrating for the authorities in Ireland that Irish Catholics insisted on celebrating Easter on a different day from Anglicans until 1752!

So, you’ll just have to wait until the REAL anniversary to learn all about the Charter of Midleton issued on 10th June 1670! Meanwhile there are one or two other matters to consider before we get to the Charter.